


let none be the noose

by feralphoenix



Series: how they felt after the flood [3]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Body Horror, Codependency, Consent Issues, Grief/Mourning, Other, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Queerplatonic Relationships, Steven Universe AU, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-19
Updated: 2016-11-19
Packaged: 2018-08-31 19:33:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8590915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: Chara still has bad days, now and again. They still push you away when things get to be too bad for you to handle by yourself, and that still hurts, but at least you have MK to distract you when that happens.

  You haven’t formed Willemite for a long time now, it seems.

  You do your best not to let that bother you.
MK learns about fusion, and Frisk and Chara have a sorely needed talk.





	

**Author's Note:**

> _(I’ll just hope for rain_ – it is easy to get smothered when you don’t see you’re [trapped](http://marchenwings.tumblr.com/post/143223868894/))
> 
> i posted a few character designs for this au (frisk, chara, sans, papyrus, pyrite, and willemite) [here on my art blog](http://dialoguelostloop.tumblr.com/post/152497483016/)! come check 'em out!
> 
>  **some extra/clarified warnings:** this fic involves a depiction of a character having an anxiety attack. also: see the consent issues tag? those are specifically fusion-related, and since fusion is sometimes (depending on the characters) treated like a g-rated stand-in for sex, if bad communication and coercion would make you uncomfortable in a sexual context, you might want to tread with caution here.
> 
>    
> ([suggested listening for frisk and chara's fusion dance](https://soundcloud.com/ubiktune/aivi-surasshu-mika)!)

MK’s presence gets to be more common in and about the temple over the next several weeks. It’s good for you to have a friend, Asgore and Toriel agree, and this will help you to understand the Earthlings and why the Crystal Gems have decided to protect this planet. Undyne is tickled to have a fan, MK decides that Papyrus is nearly as cool as she is if not cooler, and Sans has a new victim for all his favorite bad jokes. Chara watches MK warily for a while but never says anything against their presence, and the sharpness of their glares diminishes day by day. That’s that, then, you guess.

Even though Chara was able to fight and you were able to produce your ribbons, Toriel decides that you’re still both far from ready for being able to go on missions. So life at the temple goes on more or less as usual, just with MK’s addition as a common guest. Chara joins you now in exercises to try to control your powers, sometimes; others, you and Chara both cheer MK on while they try to master their magic down at the beach where they won’t break things.

Chara still has bad days, now and again. They still push you away when things get to be too bad for you to handle by yourself, and that still hurts, but at least you have MK to distract you when that happens.

You haven’t formed Willemite for a long time now, it seems.

You do your best not to let that bother you.

 

 

Today MK has brought a very fun human card game called Apples to Apples, and the two of you have bunched up on and around the sofa and table with Undyne, Papyrus, and Sans to play together—even Chara came out to join you all, wrapped up in one of the blankets from your room, first just curled up between you and Undyne, then trying to boss you into what cards to pick, then finally picking up their own hand and joining in. But all of this ends when Alphys emerges from her room with all her equipment on and three screens up. The game is halted in the middle, all of you pausing and looking up; even Asgore and Toriel stop what they’re doing on the other side of the house and stare at her.

“I-I-I-I’ve l-located that stray gem mutant,” she announces, tapping at the centermost screen with shaky hands. Her stutter is awfully pronounced. “I-It should b-be i-in the far north. W-we should hurry and g-get it now, before we lose it c-completely.”

“I agree,” says Toriel, approaching swiftly. “And I believe that this is a job for all of us, so that we do not have a repeat of the last incident where a corrupted gem appeared here at the temple.”

You look at her hopefully, but she plants her hands on her hips and shakes her head. “No, Frisk. Your powers are not yet stable enough to keep you safe in battle. You must stay behind. You, too, Chara.” Beside  you, they pull their legs up onto the couch and curl up sulkily.

“Rest of us are on call though, right?” Undyne says, getting to her feet.

“Yes. Oh, and Sans, Papyrus—you would do well to fuse beforehand. We will need Pyrite’s strength on this mission.”

“Pyrite?” MK pipes up, looking around at all of you and blinking. “Who’s that?”

Sans’ habitual grin widens. “Pyrite is sorta like my bro’s and my secret weapon. You wanna see?”

“Secret weapon???” MK’s eyes light up. “Yo, cool! I definitely wanna see!!”

Next to you, Chara is frowning, but Papyrus leaps to his feet. “Then, by all means!! Let us clear a space and give a proper demonstration!!!”

Undyne, Alphys, Asgore, and Toriel all back up to let Papyrus and Sans have the whole kitchen and living room space. MK bounces excitably beside you; Chara’s frown deepens. “Fusion isn’t supposed to be a _show,”_ they complain, but in a voice so low that you think only you hear them do it. You reach out to lay your hand on theirs, and they shift a little under your touch but don’t pull away.

Sans and Papyrus stand several feet away from each other, and salute each other with a formality—a tenderness—that they rarely show during their day-to-day jibing and ribbing one another. Slowly, they start to dance.

Sans’ dances in combat and in practice, in summoning his huge skull cannon—his movements in general, when he’s not slouching his way from one place to another—emphasize his legs, his lower body, his footsteps. He’ll hold his upper body professionally stiff and still, beating out a rhythm with the stiff metal soles of his shoes. And Papyrus, long, tall, and elegant, is all hips and knees, arms held poised. But here, together, Sans’ tap and Papyrus’ jazz find a happy medium—Papyrus gets heavier in the feet, and Sans gets looser. There’s a mischievous energy between them, a spark or a charge that they only bring out in each other—like their dance styles, sometimes they can’t mesh, sometimes they wind up clashing instead. But these times when they find a harmony together are why, you think, they call each other brothers in human terms to explain what they mean to each other.

The marbled blue-and-white larimar on the back of Sans’ hand and the rough hopeite along the nape of Papyrus’ neck have both started to glow, all dissonant blue and orange, bright and eye-catching as they approach one another.

They slap hands, a joyful and triumphant high-five, and both their bodies turn into light and swirl together.

MK gasps. Chara grumbles again, but quieter. Undyne, Alphys, Asgore, and Toriel smile on in the background as Pyrite straightens up.

Pyrite stands at over seven feet tall, nearly the same height as Asgore. Since both Sans and Papyrus are skeletons, he is one too, but his body type is balanced between the two halves that make him up; he’s solidly built where Papyrus is long and noodly and Sans is short and squat and chubby. He has Sans’ broad face, Papyrus’ square jaw, and Sans’ wide eye sockets, lit from within by bright little lights. And he’s got four arms, two sprouting from each shoulder. The upper pair are from Papyrus and the lower from Sans, which you can tell by the way it’s his lower left hand that has a gem on it.

 _“Whoooooooaaaaaa,”_ MK exclaims, bouncing up and down. “What just happened?! Where did Sans and Papyrus go?! This is so _cooooool!”_

“Pyrite is both of ‘em together,” Undyne says, grinning wide. “This is _fusion._ It’s one of the coolest tricks us Crystal Gems have got up our sleeve.”

“Unfortunately, we must depart so that we may take care of our mission,” Asgore cuts in. “MK, if you would like to learn more about fusion and how it works, you can always have Chara and Frisk tell you about it before we come back.”

“I’ll be seeing you all again soon,” Pyrite says, shooting his newest fan a bright wink. He follows Asgore and Toriel to the warp pad, and surrounded by the other four members of the Crystal Gems, he disappears into a beam of light.

 

 

MK is energized after Sans and Papyrus’ display and Chara is in a sour mood, so the three of you leave the temple to walk on the beach.

“Fusion,” Chara says haughtily, “is a technique wherein two gems synchronize and combine their physical forms via dance to become a new person entirely, a sort of embodiment of their relationship that will possess all their strengths and all their flaws.”

“Yo, that is so freakin’ _awesome,”_ MK says, jumping up and down in the sand. “Can any gems fuse? How do you know what kinda gem is gonna come out of a fusion? What would happen if two of the same kind of gem fused?”

“One question at a time, maybe,” Chara replies, but they’re smiling a little bit. “Any two or more gems _can_ fuse, but that doesn’t mean that they _should._ Fusions are relationships given physical form. They’re not really one person, or however many gems went into making them in a fusion-shaped trenchcoat, like your Earth cartoons.

“And because they’re relationships, they’ll be stronger or weaker depending on how well their component parts work together. Pyrite,” they go on scathingly, “is a _notoriously_ unstable fusion. Sans and Papyrus are an excellent combination as long as they’re in good moods, but they’ll get into spats or shut each other out or be unable to keep up with one another and then they’ll come undone right away. They have _mountains_ of issues to work out.”

Chara of all people shouldn’t be judgmental about that, you think, but you keep it to yourself. “We don’t always know what kind of gem the fusion will be if it’s a new one,” you pick up for them, “but usually the color is somewhere in between the gems that made them. Sans is a Larimar, which is blue, and Papyrus is a Hopeite, which is orange, so they wind up as a Pyrite when they fuse—those are kind of desaturated gold.”

“Frisk has always lived on Earth and so they’ve never seen it, but if two of the same type of gem fuse, they’ll just turn into a bigger version of that same gem. Common, weak gems like Rubies are expected to fuse to fight enemies. It’s why Homeworld uses them as foot soldiers.”

Not even MK can mistake the bitterness in Chara’s voice when they speak of Homeworld, so they rush to change the topic. “So, uh… if fusions are based on relationships, like, who usually fuses with who in the Crystal Gems?”

“Sans and Papyrus, obviously,” you say, holding your fingers up to count. “And Alphys and Undyne, but not as often.”

“Alphys is shy about dancing, and those two like to be all cuddly, which is hard to do if you’re literally fused together,” Chara quips.

“And Chara and me. That’s it,” you supply.

“That’s not quite true,” Chara says, surprising you. “Toriel and Asgore used to fuse. Into Rhodolite.”

 _“I’ve_ never seen them do that,” you say, turning to them in fascination.

“Yeah, well. They _used_ to. They don’t anymore, not after we lost Asriel and the others. I don’t remember it very well, but they tried to fuse once and it went very poorly. They were falling apart too badly on their own to support each other, and…” They shrug dispassionately. “They’re both sensible gems, so once they got stung they decided to call it quits.”

Something sad wrenches in your chest, in the vicinity of your own gem. MK looks uncomfortable. And though Chara talks about it like none of it has anything to do with them, you get the feeling that it must have hurt them deeply to watch back then.

“You guys can fuse too, though?” MK cuts in quickly. “That’s like, super amazing?? What’s it like when you do it? Would you mind showing me?”

“Sure!” you say, at the same moment Chara says, “I won’t do it.”

Your imitation stomach plunges so rapidly it sends chills all through you; instinctively, you bring a hand up to press over your gem, like you’ve been attacked and have to shield it from harm.

“Why?” you ask Chara, turning to face them fully.

Their shoulders come up beneath their sweater; they turn away from you slightly, the green underlayer of their hair flashing briefly in the light. They narrow their eyes and clench their left hand as they say, “I said so earlier. Fusion isn’t supposed to be a show or something we do to entertain others. It should be about _us_ and us alone.”

“But it’s just MK,” you argue, heat rising to your face. “They’re my friend. _Our_ friend. Why is it bad to want to show them what our relationship is like? It’s been a long time since we’ve fused, too. I _miss_ being Willemite. Why can’t we just fuse for fun for a little while?”

“I just don’t want to,” Chara says, crossing their arms under their chest, refusing to look at you. “Is that such a crime?”

“But you _never_ want to fuse anymore, and you won’t tell me _why,”_ you retort. The heat is gathering in your eyes and your nose, and your voice is starting to rise; you’re probably building up towards tears. You take a great shuddering breath and will yourself not to burst out crying. “Am I just—finally not good enough for you anymore?”

Chara flinches visibly, and it sends a double pang through you to watch their eyes widen and their mouth tighten into an expression that’s almost a smile but not quite. You hate to hurt them, but they also look so _guilty,_ you can’t help but wonder if you’ve hit on the truth.

“That isn’t _it,”_ they say, rubbing both hands over their face. “We’ve talked about this over and over, Frisk. Take no as an answer.”

“How can I take no as an answer when you won’t even explain _why_ you’re saying no?” you exclaim. “I want to _understand!”_

The look in Chara’s eyes when they drop their hands to their sides and ball them into fists is like they’ve drawn shutters over their heart and then locked them. “No means _no,”_ they growl. “I don’t even want to talk to you unless you can _understand_ that much.”

They brush past you roughly and make for the temple in steps that widen in the sand until they’re trotting, leaving you blinking blankly at the edge of the beach. Chara was shaking—you felt it when they passed you. You can’t comprehend what’s just happened.

“Dude,” MK says softly, reminding you that they’re here, and have been all along. You turn to face them guiltily.

“Am I… did I do something wrong?” you ask them, voice cracking. “Does Chara hate me now?”

“I dunno, man,” MK says, shaking their head. They seem troubled. “I don’t think they hate you. I think they’re just upset. Frisk—give ‘em a second or two to calm down first, but… dude, I think you ought to go after them and talk about this. Like, I don’t get all this fusion stuff, really, but… it sounds like this is important to you both. So I think you should try and talk it out some more.”

You take a deep, deep breath. Let it out. MK is looking at you with very serious eyes.

“Okay,” you say. They’re your friend—they want to help you. It’s up to you to accept that. “I trust you.”

MK nods and smiles at you. “Good luck, man.”

You smile back. “Thanks.”

 

 

On MK’s advice, you wait until you see them back to Beach City and then count to a hundred for good measure before you go looking for Chara, but as soon as you’ve waited for as long as you can stand, you’re off.

They know that the temple is the first place that you’d look for them, and so you only give it a cursory search. You check the beach and the cliff after this, and climb the hill behind the temple; finally, you catch sight of Chara curled up at the base of the lighthouse.

You venture in closer, and they immediately raise their head from where it’s rested on their arms to stare at you warily. “Go away, Frisk.”

You crouch down as you approach, holding your hands up. “You don’t want to fuse, okay,” you say, placating as you can. “I won’t push you to. But I _do_ want to talk about why. Is that… I don’t know, is that okay?” When Chara doesn’t move to get up or leave, you sit down near them in the grass, trying to still give them space. “I just… want to know your reasons, because… it hurts my feelings a lot when you push me away. It really does feel like… I don’t know, like you’re tired of me because I’m no good substitute for Asriel.”

Chara winces and looks away.

“If—if that is the case,” you push, “I want you to… to just tell me straight out instead of avoiding me. Please. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I just want to help.”

“That’s not it,” they say at length, not looking at you. “Frisk, I… sometimes how hard you try to help me scares me. Okay? I know I’m a mess right now. I know you’re just doing this because you care. But sometimes… you remind me too much of how things got to be so bad between me and Asriel, and I just—I don’t want to repeat the same thing with you. It’s like trying to fill up the entirety of space, Frisk. You could burn yourself out trying to fix me.

“You keep suggesting that we be Willemite so that I can forget about it for a while, but… that was me and Asriel. We were Pyromorphite all the time so that I could stop being me and avoid dealing with my own problems. I know that’s no good. I’ve told you before, I don’t want to do to you what I did to him, or put you in my position. So I just… don’t want to lean on you too much.”

You scoot in a little closer. Chara doesn’t move away. Under the smell of grass and flowers and summer sun, there’s the distant scent of the sea, all salt and brine.

“I’m not avoiding you because I want a substitute for Asriel. I’m doing it because I’m scared I’ll try using you as a substitute for him anyway. I don’t trust myself to do right by you when I’m like this.” They rest their forehead on their knees again. “I’d rather shatter myself than use you, the way that…” They trail off. “You’re a full-fledged gem—a person—not a tool. You deserve to be treated like one, not just used for somebody’s comfort and then set aside.”

You edge in closer yet, until you’re nearly in the shadow of the lighthouse too. It’s palpably colder where Chara’s sitting, like the base of the tower still clings to some essence of the chill hours of morning.

“Okay,” you say.

They stir a little but don’t sit back up.

“But—I really want you to still let me help at least a little,” you go on. “I get why you’re scared—well, I don’t think I can say I really _understand,_ but I do know, now. And I do think that it’s for the best, that you lean on everyone else too, and that I have MK as a friend and I have other distractions so that I’m not just worrying about you all the time. But I still want you to lean on me sometimes, instead of leaning on everybody _but_ me. It hurts a lot when I can’t do anything. And… I do want to still fuse with you sometimes, too. Not all the time, and not as a way to escape things either, but… I don’t want Willemite to just be about the fair-weather parts of our relationship. I still want there to be a you and me even when things are hard and you’re sad.

“If—if you tell me no, if you don’t feel up to fusing, then I’ll respect that. Just… please let me in sometimes. Is that… okay?”

Chara breathes in long and slow, and you hold your breath as they do. Finally, they exhale and look up; you let your breath out too.

“Okay,” they answer. Their eyes are wet.

You hold your arms out, and they crawl out of the lighthouse’s shadow to wrap yours around them too. Despite everything, their physical form is warm and solid against your chest.

“Do you want to maybe talk to Asgore or Toriel about the Asriel stuff when everybody gets back?” you ask their shoulder.

Chara tenses subtly in your arms, and their fingers clench in your shirt. “Those two took it hard too, though. I don’t… I don’t want to hurt them just because I need to unload.”

“You can ask them if they’re feeling up to it first and all,” you say. “But—I mean this could work with any of the others too, not just them, but Chara, I know that there are some things that I just won’t understand because I never knew Asriel. The others went through the same things as you, so they might be in a better position to sympathize. They might be able to help you where I can’t.”

Chara breathes in slow and sighs, leaning their head against yours. “I guess you’re right. I can ask, next time, instead of… letting things build up until I can’t function anymore. It still… hurts to talk about. But I guess I’ve got to try sometimes, don’t I.” You tighten your hold on them a little, and they turn so that their forehead is pressed against the side of your throat. Your face feels warm. “Thanks.”

You lean on them for a moment, then clear your throat. “Are we… I don’t know, um, are we okay?”

Chara squeezes you briefly and rubs your back. “We’re okay,” they say.

You sigh and sag against them. “Okay.”

 

 

Two days later, you and Chara invite MK to the little dance studio room with its mirrored walls and the support bars at just your height.

“As an apology, sort of,” Chara says while MK sits down. “I know I was a little rude to you before.”

“Dude, don’t worry about it, it’s okay,” MK assures them. They’re wiggling a little from excitement; you smile to them briefly as you and Chara take your places on opposite ends of the room. You feel exactly the same way.

You hold your hands up parallel in front of your chest, one over the other, fingers splayed out; Chara raises an eyebrow at you, and you stick out your tongue and drop out of the sign, placing your feet. Chara arcs out their arms to you, beckoning.

This dance is a light one, playful and comfortable, and it feels good to sink back into the familiar motions, to move your body in tandem with another’s. The music in your bones, in your gem, is softer in its rhythms and melodies than Chara’s; in your soft boots you can’t replicate their perfect pointe and hairpin turns anyway. But you don’t need to, because the blending of your contemporary and their ballet brings them down to flat feet to meet you.

You point your toes as you slide across the shiny floor to meet them, a relaxed smile rising to your face as the two of you reach out to brush fingertips briefly before parting, turning back to back with your bodies hardly touching.

You make an extra half turn; Chara’s palms find a warm hold on the backs of your shoulders, then loosen so that their fingertips trace down your back; you shiver as the two of you sink together, your knees straining. It’s not actually a dip—they’re not supporting your weight; you’re not quite touching them either. They rest their hands on your sides just above your hips, and you set yours just below the nape of your neck, precisely when you would no longer be able to support your weight by yourself any longer, and they let you sink lower and lower, until your hair is just brushing the dance floor; you lift your leg high and curled, the inside of your knee just grazing Chara’s hip.

Something warm and bubbly and confusing rises in the pit of your belly, and you kiss the corner of Chara’s mouth soft and polite where normally you might have pecked them on the cheek. Their red eyes open wide—then they headbutt you gently, and you both giggle—

     and your body feels very light,

            and you melt together like stardust and clouds—

 

 

 

—and you twirl in circles and laugh, because it’s just been so _long_ since you’ve been yourself; the warmth and the lightness and the carefree floatiness of your _you_ ness is something that neither Frisk nor Chara possesses on their own.

You open all four of your eyes, and your field of vision expands; it’s so bright that you have to close your upper set, the pair from Frisk more light-sensitive than the set from Chara. Your long hair and your skirts billow; your jewelry jingles, a symphony of sensation and of sound both.

Your height, your perspective, your line of vision is much higher than either Frisk’s or Chara’s, and you’re built for contemporary ballet—so although you move with all the technical elements of Chara’s dance, your rhythms and motions are more relaxed and organic like Frisk’s instead of stiff and precise. You turn in your silver ballet flats one more time just to feel your clothes twirl around you, just to feel the way that Chara’s sweater pulls against your shoulders and your breasts. It’s too small for you really, ending above your elbows and the base of your ribs.

_(there’s a brief pounding of pain in Chara as that occurs to you/us, like a splinter in your/their/our heart; you turn to them in the wrapped-tight warmth of you/them as Willemite, but they bury it and push you away with a sharp thought of it’s-fine)_

_“Whoa,”_ MK whispers, reverent. “You guys are so pretty.”

You giggle and turn to greet them, to thank them, but your vision catches on their yellow scales and the green smock they’re wearing today, and pain pounds through your head, your vision abruptly going sickly orange

_and he replaces them in your/Chara’s mind’s eye, and oh, you/Frisk think/s, that’s what he looked like: Small and white and furred like Toriel or Asgore, but in miniature, so small that you/Chara know he’s just as defective as you/Chara and Sans and all the others (their forms and gems blur in your head too fast, Frisk realizing that perhaps some of these lost ones never had names to begin with). But the gem in his palm is perfect clear honey-gold, the highest grade of Imperial Topaz there is, a rich and flawless color_

_and Asriel laughs and opens his arms for you/Chara, and your/Frisk’s stomach lurches as you/they/we/they recognize the Crystal Gems’ star embedded in the palm pad of his left hand, and_

“Guys?”

MK’s voice is full of alarm, but they sound so far away.

You double over, clutching your stomach, your head, fighting different meals eaten at different times trying to rebel. The faint overlay of orange turns green, and your vision doubles, and your body goes vague and glowing, splitting apart at the seams

_“Chara,” you call, reaching for them, “come on, Chara, breathe. It’s just a memory. Breathe and let it in and let it go. I’m here. We’re here. I’m here for you—”_

_But Chara is molten against you, too hot to touch, and you’re unable to hold them_

and you tear down the middle

“no no no no no no no no no I’m sorry I’m sorry,” Chara is saying through your mouth, voice becoming more and more theirs,

and there’s a pain – sharp – unbearable – and –

 

 

—you go tumbling to land, painfully, in a split with one heel brushed up against the mirrored wall.

Chara is still hunched in the middle of the room, not yet fully resolved. You push yourself up on hands and knees and limp over to them, crouching by their side, making yourself as small as you can to try not to overwhelm them.

“Chara,” you say, soft. “Look at me. Look at me, and try to breathe, okay?”

They let out a low animal moan, bowing so that their hair pools on the floor.

“Frisk?” MK says from the wall, uncertain.

“I’ve got this,” you tell them, not looking away. “They have attacks sometimes, I can get them through it. Chara, c’mon, breathe with me—”

Heedless of your pleas, they moan again, the terrible sound resolving into apologies again. “I’m sorry, Ree I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”

And you catch your breath to see their pale olive skin suddenly crawl with green-veined red marks like a rash, like burns.

The green veins open to gaping eyes—yellow sclera, red irises, pupils black as nightmares. You gasp. The eyes focus on you and then blink closed; Chara moans again, and the patterns on their skin contort, blurring into their usual skin tone—then reemerging in dark green splotches that erupt from their flesh in little spikes.

“This doesn’t seem normal,” MK calls from the wall. “Should I get somebody?”

“If I can’t calm them down in another minute or so, maybe,” you babble back. Maybe touching Chara will just make it worse—maybe it will snap them out of it, though. You don’t know what to do, and their body just keeps glowing and contorting and then returning to normal, like they can’t keep their physical form stable anymore.

Like they’re—

Like they’re mutating.

Your insides twist; your stomach feels about to rebel. You cinch your arms firmly around Chara’s arching shoulders, holding them tight and close to your chest: “Chara, I’m here, Chara, don’t leave me. Don’t leave me. I’m here. You’re here. It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.”

They yowl and struggle; you cling tighter and squeeze your eyes shut and hope. Finally—slowly—they start to go limp, and there’s no playing lights along your eyelids, and their hands grasp your shirt, small and five-fingered.

You open one eye, hesitant, and then the other; Chara lies slumped against you, body still hitching with the occasional silent sob but mercifully humanoid and stable. You sigh and cuddle them close, stroking the ridge of their spine.

“Are you okay?” you ask, soft.

“No,” they say flatly, and despite yourself you smile.

“Do you want to talk about it?” you ask.

They’re quiet for a while.

“I don’t think I was ready,” they sigh at last. “Sometimes I feel—like I’m betraying him _and_ using you all at once. I know that it’s—it’s stupid, that I’m being an idiot. But I didn’t want to make you feel bad again. Thought I was okay. I wasn’t. I’m sorry.”

You bite your lip. “You didn’t really want to fuse,” you say.

Chara is silent.

“You just felt pressured into it because of what I said?”

They still say nothing, but they make a tiny movement against your chest that feels like it might be a nod.

 _“I’m_ sorry,” you tell them. “You’re—you can say no to me whenever you want, Chara. If—if you want to fuse but are afraid of imposing on me, we can talk it out better. And if you’re not feeling up to it like today, please, tell me. I don’t want to hurt you like this. You… for a second it looked like you were…”

“I almost forgot,” they say, so low you have to strain to hear it. “Not just who I am, but _what_ I am. It felt… awful. Like I really am just a defect. A thing.”

You hold them tighter. “You’re not. I’m sorry. You’re not.” Rest your cheek on their hair. “Do you want me or MK to go get someone? So that you could stay with someone else, if you’re not comfortable with me…?”

Their fists grip your shirt tighter. “You don’t have to. I just… I just want to stay like this for a while, Frisk. You and me separate. So that I can remember where—where my borders are.”

“Okay.”

You have to talk about this a lot more, you think. So that you can work these things out better, and be there for one another and keep each other safe without hurting one another.

But at least for now, you finally understand that it’s not just Chara who’s pushing you away too hard. You can push too hard, too—you can really hurt them if you aren’t careful, if you don’t communicate and consider their feelings.

You’re _going_ to be more careful.

“I’m sorry,” you say again. “Next time… before we fuse… let’s talk more about how we feel, and make sure we’re both up for it and okay. I promise I won’t be mad if you tell me no. I promise I can wait if you say you want to take a break for a while.”

Chara’s grip on you tightens even further.

“I’d appreciate that.”

You nod, and hold them tight, and close your eyes.

“I think we should—should talk to Asgore and Toriel about what almost happened to me,” they say, muffled against your chest.

Your instinct is to refuse, to point out that all the others ever seem to _do_ is hunt down corrupted gems. But it’s Chara’s body, and they should have the final say. So you take a shaky breath and say, “Okay.”

“Dude, like… Should I go get them?” MK asks, hesitant.

“Yes, but give us a minute first,” Chara says, still curled up to you. “I want to calm down a little more. I want to just stay like this for a while.”

You tighten your grip on them just a little bit, keeping your eyes closed tight.


End file.
